A Breath Too Late

by Rocky Callen

  Henry sat in his seat next to me. The bell was about to ring and then I heard your voice go softer, go deeper, as if this was something you had waited even longer to say. “Besides, you know all about breaking things.”

  28

  Depression,

  You liked to tell me stories. Tragedies. The tragedy of me. I stood staring in mirrors wondering where the bits of me had been left behind. When I looked into my eyes, they didn’t often seem like my own. You’d whisper the end to the story in my ear. A window. A rope. A cut. A pill. The method changed. But the ending was always the same: I would be gone.

  Your stories scared me.

  But I listened.

  And they were a secret, because I was too afraid to say them aloud.

  29

  August,

  The next day, you tugged on my sleeve when I was sitting down in Chemistry.

  “What?” I practically barked at you.

  “I’m sorry,” you said, hands up in surrender. “I shouldn’t have said what I said.”

  Instead of accepting your apology, I asked, “Why aren’t you going to art school?” I still couldn’t force the disappointment out of my voice. I tried, but I failed.

  You swallowed hard. “I—I just couldn’t ask my parents. I couldn’t tell them that I wanted to be an artist.”

  I tensed. You couldn’t tell them? I breathed through my nose and tried to keep the annoyance out of my voice.

  “Why not?”

  “I mean, my dad is this business exec and my mom was a lawyer before she had me and it just felt, I felt…”

  I waited.

  “… that they couldn’t accept it.”

  “Did you even ask?”

  You raised your eyebrows as if the question never occurred to you. “No … They asked me what I wanted to do after high school and I was sitting there at the dining room table and I just felt so much pressure, you know? They let me do art, but I knew they thought I would give that up and grow up when I left for college. So when they asked, I just blurted out ‘business school.’” You sighed. “You should have seen my dad’s face, Ellie. He was so happy, so proud. I just … I don’t want to take that away from them.”

  You were doing business because you felt you had to, as if you were cornered into it, as if you had no other choice. I knew what that felt like. I stopped going to the woods all those years ago with you because I felt I had no choice. But you did have choices, you were just afraid to make them.

  “You shouldn’t do things you don’t want to just because you think that’s what other people want,” I said.

  You ran your fingers through your hair. “I wish I could believe that.”

  “You should.”

  “And how would that story go? Son of business executive and former lawyer goes to the big city to become an artist and instead camps out in a box with his crayons because lo and behold, the starving-artist stereotype is true.”

  I was annoyed. The August I knew, the August of lightning bugs and vivid brushstrokes, wasn’t this cynical people pleaser. He was a dreamer. He could paint magic doors to Anywhere.

  “Once upon a time, there was a boy who could paint the world with his fingertips. He didn’t know that with every brushstroke he made, people felt more real, or that with every color, he made the world more vivid. He was bright and wondrous and while not all knew his name, they knew that they were home in his art, and that was more than enough.”

  “Hi, Ellie!” Henry Jordan crammed into his seat.

  I shifted out of the memory of the pencil drawing of the world you had drawn in sixth grade. I shifted out of feeling like I was writing a story that I could breathe into life.

  “Hi, Henry!” It felt safer to look at Henry. He looked happy, as if it was a miracle that I gave him my full attention and another smile. He sat up straighter. He rested his hand on wrinkly jeans, seemed suddenly aware of their crinkliness, and started to smooth his hands over them with no luck.

  His eyes slanted toward me and his Adam’s apple bobbed as if he was nervous. The more attention I gave to Henry the more annoyed you seemed, shifting in your seat, restless. I decided that “annoyed” suited you very well, so I turned all my attention to Henry and even flashed him a rare smile featuring all of my teeth (I did have good teeth).

  You were writing on a sheet of ruled paper, twirling your pencil before scribbling.

  Mr. Jameson charged in, papers piled high in his hands. He looked like a man possessed. He reminded me of Ms. Hooper. Not in the possessed kind of way, but in the way that she could just talk about words and look like there were a thousand light bulbs turned on under her skin. He looked lit up.

  A folded sheet of paper appeared in front of me. I narrowed my eyes at it. Both boys looked ahead, innocent. But you had had the pencil, so you were clearly the note’s author. I opened up the folded sheet.

  You smile at Henry. A lot. On the next line, it read, I guess Ellie Walker has a crush on the new boy. That’s original.

  I wanted to bark a laugh. I had said something similar to you when we were eleven and Lily Flores moved into town. I had said it to embarrass you, but this note felt a little heavier than that.

  I smiled and wrote a note back on the corner of the page and shoved it toward you. You didn’t move, just your eyes glanced down to read it. Jaw clench. I wanted to giggle in my seat.

  Who can say no to dimples?

  Boys with dimples did look sweet.

  My father did not have dimples.

  * * *

  When I got home, I saw a paper folded in my pocket. I hadn’t noticed when you put it there, but I knew it could only be you. In my hands was the note I had passed to you when we were in junior high.

  I want a divorce from our

  unholy best friendship.

  Under my note was your reply:

  No.

  30

  August,

  The next day, you were standing by my locker, waiting for me. You didn’t see me at first. I looked at you and slowed my steps. You were so tall. You were slender and lean and the muscles corded over your arms in a way that made me a little breathless. I had once been wrapped up in those arms when we wrestled as kids, all innocence and toothy grins. I didn’t like the surge of feeling when I looked at you. It made me feel sad and excited all at the same time.

  You looked up. You didn’t smile. You looked vaguely nervous. A little unsure. “Walker, did you get my note?”

  I sighed loudly. As if annoyed. I was not annoyed. “Yes, Matthews. I got your note.”

  “We did write ‘till death do us part.’”

  “We were kids. What do kids know?”

  “Lots of things.”

  “Like…”

  You bit your lip. “Like maybe a kid knows that he shouldn’t have just given up when his best friend pushed him away. That maybe, deep down, he knew he was being a coward when he didn’t stick up for her or keep knocking on her door or leaving notes in her locker. That maybe he could have done more to keep his promise.”

  I blinked.

  “And maybe he knows that he will do anything to keep that promise now.”

  There were so many things that got crammed between us as we were growing up. I was ashamed that the best friend I had ever had started to slip through my fingers because of one afternoon of cowardice. Sure, you had looked away when the kids bullied me or when I was hurting, but it was only because I pushed you away first.

  I shifted my weight from foot to foot, grasping for a response. “I am not sure.”

  “Ellie—”

  “I am not sure if I want this kind of commitment, you know? I may stumble upon some other best-friend material and I don’t want to get tied down.” I held back a smirk.

  Fake-angry-glare. “You are such a charming woman.”

  I looked at my inked-up shoes, lanky legs, and ratty shirt. “I never said I was charming. Neither are you.” You were a bottle of charm and I wanted to keep you in my pocket.

  I
was smiling as I turned toward my next class, but then I felt the color leech out of me and that familiar cold numbness settle in its place. It swept me up when I wasn’t looking. It hit when I was midstride. You started chattering on about how you were top grade-A best-friend material, but all I could feel was that I was melting into the linoleum drop by drop and you didn’t even see as I dissolved into nothing.

  31

  Depression,

  You always snuck up on me when I wasn’t looking. You seeped in and dug in your claws.

  Depression can only sink your ship if you let the water inside. I read that in the guidance counselor’s office. In a magazine. Neatly tucked between advertisements for Proactiv and Zoloft, you know, the stuff someone puts on their face and in their mouth so that their inside and outside are spick-and-span. But people don’t understand that sometimes the boat capsizes. Sometimes the storm pummels the deck like bullets. And there are no life boats or buckets, nothing to toss the water out. Depression, you are the one who took an ax to the wood, you are the one who left the gaping holes where the water rushes in and we don’t even remember when you did it. We just wake up and the murky water is pulling us under.

  That’s how it was.

  Waking up in the dark, in the cold, in the wet, but our eyes are already wide open, drinking up summer days and distant laughter and we stare around and wonder how the world could go on oblivious as we stand at its center drowning.

  I found the magazine while I was sitting in the guidance counselor’s office to discuss plans after graduation. It was hard to think about the future when you were my shadow with the sharpest of teeth, eating me away.

  32

  Flyer,

  I tell my own stories in my head to try to drown out the dark ones. The ones that whisper and prod and clink against my nerves.

  I was writing one in my head when a pause in hallway traffic lifted my gaze and I saw you. And like a gunshot, you scared the shadow away. Just for a moment. Just enough. You weren’t much. A glossy 8x11 sheet of paper, but I fell in love with you. The picture was of a beautiful campus and bold white columns filling up the entire page.

  CREATIVE WRITING AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

  I looked at you and felt … home.

  I felt safe.

  I tore you off the wall.

  You were all mine.

  33

  August,

  Later that day, I was taping up the flyer inside my locker. I had Googled photos of the campus, I had read and reread the university website over and over again. My fingers lingered over the words. Columbia University. The university was prestigious. The flyer seemed to wrap up all my dreams and print it off on an 8x11 sheet of glossy paper. Words like literary art, vision, creative freedom, power, masterful writers. Each word was like a lightning bolt splintering into my heart.

  In my room, I closed my eyes at night imagining getting the acceptance letter, then taking a backpack and a train out of town up to New York City. I could make it. I knew it. I was so happy that I didn’t even care that there was a fresh bruise on my back or that I had heard my momma crying again in the bathroom last night. I would be free! I was counting down the days.

  “Earth to Ellie! Earth to Ellie!” You were behind me and I whipped around, too happy to try to ignore you. I had done a good job of that for the past couple of weeks. I wore earphones while in the halls, pretended I was taking notes in class. In Ms. Hooper’s class, you didn’t sit next to me even though there wasn’t assigned seating. You sat a row over and a couple of seats back.

  You had started doing that even when we were still best friends. It was around fourth grade. You started sitting in the back and at first it hurt my feelings. I felt like I was losing you, but then you’d gallop up to me right when the bell rang and we would walk to our next class together.

  You often tried to do that in Ms. Hooper’s class, but right when the bell rang, I would go straight to her desk and ask her about the comments she wrote on my work or what I should look for in a college if I wanted to study writing.

  I had found my talisman. Hooper had her books, Jameson had his science, I had Columbia.

  You stared at me for a second, a little startled by my lit-up smile.

  “Wow…”

  “What?”

  “It’s been a long time since I have seen that smile.”

  “I know where I want to go!” I jabbed a finger at the flyer.

  You peered past me to read it.

  “Columbia University? New York, huh?”

  “Yes!” I was practically at Jameson-level enthusiasm. “I am starting my application now. I want to send it in early.”

  You looked at me with a soft smile on your face. “Then you’ll go.”

  Your words coaxed my confidence, making it feel possible. There was a pencil tucked behind your ear and a bit of orange paint on your pants and for a moment, I felt sad thinking about you in a suit and tie. I felt sad thinking about a world without your brushstrokes. “You will too.”

  You blinked. “Me? I’ll go to Columbia?”

  “You have to tell your parents.” I didn’t elaborate. I didn’t have to because recognition pulled your lips into a small o of understanding.

  “I just think that … if we can, we should try our best to be happy.”

  You chewed on your lip and looked away from me.

  “Tell me right now that you want to go to business school. Tell me that and I won’t bother you again about it.”

  You looked at me. You didn’t say a word.

  34

  Depression,

  You were a tricky thing. I wanted to be able to scrub you clean and make you shiny so you didn’t feel like you were rotting inside of me. I wanted to throw my weight behind you and tip you off the Earth. I wanted to slam my door in your face when you came calling. Sometimes, when I felt strong, I did. I threw you into the basement. I screamed you into submission. I tricked you into the closet. I prettied you up and pretended that everything was all right.

  But when you hit and I was unprepared or was already teetering on unsteady legs, I didn’t have the lungs to yell, or the weight to shove, or the energy to pretend. You just swept me up and away, so far away. You nibbled on my fingertips and haunted my peripheral vision like a ghost with unfinished business, and that business was me. You hadn’t won, and you like to win.

  That’s why I make worlds in ink, so I can sweep myself away and wish and dream and make believe, and it will feel real for just enough time to let me build up strength again so I can face you and win.

  And when I start writing my essay for Columbia, I write all our secrets because on the page, you can’t break me.

  35

  Father,

  I sprinted up the steps and sailed right through the front door. I was high on possibility. I wanted to run up to my room and make paper angels out of all the Columbia information that I had printed at school the day before. I was about to pound up the stairs when I heard your voice coming from the living room. “Ellie.”

  “Yes, Father?” Pleaseleavemealonepleaseleavemealone.

  “Come here.”

  I went into the living room, the smile off my face. I immediately felt small. I immediately felt afraid. I immediately wanted to run.

  I stood in silence.

  You were sitting with a pile of papers in your hands. You leaned back in your chair. “Do we keep secrets in this house, Ellie?”

  “N—no.” I shook my head. “No, we don’t.”

  You flipped the stack around and I saw the columns of Dodge Hall and the map of Columbia’s campus. You had been in my room.

  “Then what are these?”

  “Just information on a college.”

  “This college isn’t local.”

  “I—I know. I just saw it and it has a good program and so I wanted to keep the information. I—I won’t be applying.” I was lying.

  “So you printed over fifty pages of information just for the fun of it?” You started to stan
d. “Do you think I’m stupid?”

  Lighter open. Lighter shut.

  “No, I just printed the information.”

  He nodded, pretending to believe me. “That’s good. Because you aren’t leaving this house. Ellie, your place is here with your momma and me.”

  “I know that.”

  “Good.” The lighter lit and you burned the pages.

  I turned on my heel and went up the stairs.

  36

  August,

  The night that Father burned those pages, he told me that if I ever tried to break my promise, if I ever tried to leave, Momma would be lonely. “What would happen to her?” he said. Lighter open. Lighter shut. Eyes staring out the window. A threat.

  I nodded. I was wrung dry, all the enthusiasm drained out of me. All the dreaming.

  The next day when school was done, I ripped the flyer out of my locker and I went to the trash can to throw it in. I was so tired of wanting things and not wanting things, of the rollercoaster of my emotions, of the way everything just felt too far and out of reach.

  Maybe it was time to stop reaching, like Momma.

  I was shaking, but I finally threw it in. I must’ve stayed there long after the bell rang, because by the time I looked up, the halls were empty except for you. You watched me with unjudging saucer eyes. My hand fell to my side, suddenly ashamed.

  Girls like me shouldn’t have big dreams. They stay in their houses of secrets and die there.

  I turned around and walked toward the front door of the school. I battled my thoughts all night, wrestling back and forth with the possibility of New York, of Columbia, of classrooms and professors and beautiful stained-oak doors. It seemed like it was galaxies away from my row house on Sunset Street.